What is small group learning and teaching?

This teaching resource note is not about small groups in the conventional sense of seminar or tutorial groups, which may involve anything upwards from 12 to 20+ students. You may want to split these larger groups into smaller ones for a variety of activities – it’s the management of these activities that I’m addressing here.

So how small is a ‘small group’? There is no perfect size for a learning group, but the smaller the better is a good rule. In my experience groups of 2-4 work well:

• there’s more opportunity for each member to participate and ‘own’ the work
• individuals find it harder to hide and avoid doing their share
• it’s easier for the tutor to spot and sort out problems

With groups of more than six, organising and distributing the work is more complex and unwieldy. Individual contributions may not be seen as valuable to the success of the group. A group may lose its identity and members split off into smaller factions.

Secondly, what is meant by ‘teaching’? In small group work the teacher acts as facilitator or consultant. There’s a lot of literature on methods of small group working – the American literature in particular describes two kinds: co-operative and collaborative. The two are distinguished by the degree of control transferred from teacher to group, and the way the work is organised and carried out.

Co-operative work is the more highly structured and tutor directed of the two. At its extreme, the tutor selects group members and allocates roles – group spokesperson, group recorder, etc. The tutor sets tasks and goals, and monitors group activities quite closely (for example by circulating among the groups, clarifying and explaining, putting groups which have strayed back on track, giving encouragement).

Each group member works on a task and brings it back to the group. Each is held accountable for his/her own contribution to the group’s work. The outcome is a synthesis of work done by individuals. Members are allocated individual marks or grades.

Collaborative work, on the other hand, shifts more responsibility from tutor to group. Tasks and roles are allocated by the groups themselves, who work on collective problem solving and are jointly responsible for strategies used to achieve the outcome as well as for the outcome itself. Performance may be awarded a group mark or grade.

Collaborative methods are based on the assumption that students are responsible team members who will use their already well developed social skills to perform group tasks effectively. The role of the facilitator will therefore be more ‘hands off’. Problems will be referred back to the groups themselves to solve.

A lot of small group work is a mixture of the two approaches, depending what it is you want your groups to do. The collaborative, ‘hands off’ methods are suitable for broader based, longer term tasks like projects and casework, whereas the co-operative, ‘hands on’ version is more appropriate for one-off exercises and discussions.

Last Modified: 2 August 2010